A Night Far Too Painful to Forget

It has been 27 years, but my memories of that evening remain as vivid as they are painful. It was April 4, 1968. The topic of conversation that day was Dr. Martin Luther King. He had returned to Memphis to lead the city’s garbage workers in a strike.

I had been in Memphis for more than a year attending the University of Tennessee Medical School. Of the 100 in my class, there were no black students and only two women.

I lived in a fraternity house with 29 other medical students, most of whom were from the South.

It was a lonely experience for me. The fact that I was an Irish Catholic made me unusual, but not unacceptable. But because I was from Cleveland and believed that black people and white people should have the same freedoms and that Dr. King was doing great things, I was dismissed as a “liberal Yankee.”

Once I came back to my room from a class to find a sign on my door: “Rogers, if your heart ain’t in Dixie, get your ass out.”

Dinner was ending and Florence was collecting the dishes. Florence was black and 50 years old. She cooked our meals and served us. She did our laundry and ran our errands.

Florence fed our egos by calling all of us “doctor.” She was kind and projected a happiness heavily flavored with optimism. “I live to do the will of the Lord,” she said often.

Before she served us breakfast, she would ask: “Did you ask the Lord Jesus to come into your heart this morning?”

Each of us, dutifully, would answer “yes” or be subject to admonitions and references to the Bible and probably be late for class. Or maybe we answered “yes” so we wouldn’t disappoint her.

I learned from knowing Florence that there is a dignity that comes with genuine humility. She was loved and respected by all of us. Even the racists spared her.

It was near 6:30 that night when a fellow student, Denny, came crashing through a side door of our fraternity house. Denny’s eyes were wide, his expression intense.

“They shot King downtown,” he shouted. “He’s dead. King’s dead.”

I was the first one to get to Denny. “God! That’s awful. Who did it?” I asked. “Did they catch him? Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Who’s got a cigarette? They don’t know who did it. He was pronounced dead at St. Joe’s.”

“Well,” said Harry, a self-proclaimed “country boy” from east Tennessee. “Isn’t that a terrible shame.” Using a racial epithet, he said he bet a black person shot King.

“Why did it have to happen here?” Carl asked. “This will really hurt Memphis.”

I had to leave. I had to go somewhere and be alone. I couldn’t grieve among fools. But first there was someone I had to see.

Florence was in the kitchen bending over a deep sink. Both of her lower arms were buried in dishwater. Her radio was on. The announcer was talking about Dr. King’s assassination. There were tears on her cheeks; her face was fixed in sorrow.

“Florence,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for coming to tell me that.”

“I loved him, too,” I said.

She straightened and dried her arms off with her apron. She held her arms out to me. We embraced and she began to sob.

The harsh, nonstop sounds of sirens made it seem as if Memphis were in a state of siege. As I walked across Union Avenue, police cars sped toward downtown. A car with its horn blowing and three white men in the front seat pulled along the curb.

“Hey,” yelled one of the men out the passenger window. He held out a can of beer to me. “C’mon and join us. It’s definitely time to celebrate.”

I don’t know for sure, but I probably said a short prayer then that I was to repeat often: “God, don’t let me become like these people.”

I walked toward an apartment complex on Poplar Avenue about a mile from the fraternity house. Four guys in my class lived there. The five of us had become friends after we had met at a Bobby Kennedy for President rally at school. I needed to be with people with whom I could share my feelings.

I was going to take a short cut through the City of Memphis Hospital. As I approached the hospital door, I saw a hearse escorted by two police cars enter the parking lot next to the Pathology Building. In the basement of the building was the Shelby County Morgue.

I walked toward the parking lot and saw a man swinging open the back of the hearse. A policeman with his hand resting on top of his gun came toward me.

“Is that Dr. King?” I asked.

“Who are you?” he barked.

“Just a mourner,” I said and stared as two men pulled the stretcher from the back of the hearse. The body had a dark plastic covering.

“Go mourn somewhere else, boy. Get outta here.”

The sound of sirens from downtown was now peppered with the crisp, snapping sounds of gunshots as I walked up Poplar Avenue. Memphis was at war with itself.

As I approached my friends’ apartment building, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of partying. White people with drinks were talking and laughing loudly in the courtyard. A few doors were open, and from inside apartments, rock music blasted into the night. Couples stood in front of apartments and toasted those in the courtyard and others in the buildings across from them.

My friends’ apartment seemed miles away. To get to them, I would have to run a gantlet through these people. I turned and walked away.

As I walked past the hospital, I noticed a large group standing outside the Pathology Building. As I approached, I could hear their soft voices singing “We Shall Overcome.” A few held lit candles or flickering cigarette lighters. Some held hands.

As I joined the gathering, I saw that most were students, many were white and some were crying.

A large black man in a dark suit stood in front of me. As the singing continued he shouted in a deep, powerful voice, “Martin, may the angels of Paradise bring you swiftly to the bosom of Abraham.”

A few voices said, “Amen.” Other voices called out, “Don’t forget us, Dr. King. . . . We love you, Martin. . . . God bless you, Dr. King.”

There are two things that bring people together--a shared sorrow and a common enemy. Clearly those of us who stood outside the Shelby County Morgue the evening of April 4, 1968, shared a sorrow. One of history’s greatest men, Martin Luther King Jr.--a passionate, peaceful, eloquent man--was gone.

Our common enemy, racial hatred, would remain alive. How to fight racism remains as vague today as it was 27 years ago.

I shared a dream with Martin Luther King. That dream was that men’s hearts could be changed.

For the most part, that didn’t happen. Laws have been changed, but not enough hearts.

*

Dr. Peter D. Rogers is director of adolescent and young adult medicine at the T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn.